Farmhouse Kitchen: Thai adventure, and comfort, in the Mission

Panang Neua, beef short rib ($22), which is served with blue rice, at Farmhouse Kitchen in the Mission District.

Panang Neua, beef short rib ($22), which is served with blue rice,...

The rice is blue. I’ve never seen blue rice before at a Thai restaurant or anywhere. An inquiry reveals that it gets its cornflower color from the blue pea flower imported from Thailand. The coloring gives the rice a faint floral dimension, but mostly it just offers another point of contrast on the prettily plated dishes at Farmhouse Kitchen in the Mission.

Farmhouse Kitchen co-owner Ling Chatterjee grew up in Bangkok, but hadn’t encountered the traditional blue rice in the capital until a visit a few years ago. To her, it represents the changing face of Thai cuisine. “Food changes just like fashion,” she says. “We want to bring something current (to show) what’s going on in Thailand.”

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Chatterjee and her husband, chef Kasem “Pop” Saengsawang, also co-own Blackwood in the Marina and Kitchen Story in the Castro, two popular brunch restaurants that offer Western standards alongside Asian dishes. Farmhouse Kitchen is their bid at an entirely Thai menu, one that strays from Americanized Thai fare and combines fresh elements, like blue rice, with dishes from Saengsawang’s upbringing in the rural Loei province in northeast Thailand.

The results are mixed. Though a few items soar to the palate-expanding heights of exciting new Thai restaurants like Kin Khao and Hawker Fare, most are merely better-than-average renditions of your typical takeout spot. As a result, Farmhouse Kitchen is something of a hybrid: a place to bring adventurous eaters, but also a place to get a comforting weeknight meal.

Ingredients are important to Saengsawang, who sources cage-free eggs, Mary’s organic chickens, Snake River Farm beef, and local fruits and vegetables as avidly as any restaurant serving California cuisine. As the oldest child on the farm growing up, most of the chores fell to him, from gathering hen eggs to cutting fresh grass to feed the cattle to waking up at 4 a.m. every day and driving to the market to do the day’s food shopping. Those experiences, he says, made him into the chef he is today.

Hat Yai Fried Chicken at Farmhouse Kitchen.

Hat Yai Fried Chicken at Farmhouse Kitchen.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle

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Hat Yai Fried Chicken at Farmhouse Kitchen.

Hat Yai Fried Chicken at Farmhouse Kitchen.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle

Farmhouse Kitchen: Thai adventure, and comfort, in the Mission

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His story is told in items like the massive beef short rib, which arrives draped in Panang curry looking like something out of “The Flintstones.” It’s braised overnight until it falls off the bone with the gentlest encouragement, an homage to the tough meat cuts that Saengsawang used to find at the market. The grass-fed beef is well matched to the earthy curry; it’s the kind of dish that quiets the table when it arrives.

So too is the fried chicken, an Instagram-worthy arrangement of deftly fried chicken breast with blue rice, roti squares, sweet chile sauce and a rich yellow potato curry. The chicken meat is tender under its crackling crust, and the cumin-rich curry and syrupy chile mingle nicely. Phone cameras came out again at the arrival of a dessert plate, an assembly of Thai-inspired sweets, including coconut ice cream and mango and sticky rice.

Several dishes were intriguing but lacked bold flavors. A Bangkok-style herbal rice salad was technically interesting, with crisp puffed rice, ripe mango shreds and salty peanuts, but I wanted more from the watery tamarind sauce. Green curry with bone-in chicken, a blood cube and vermicelli noodles was barely spicy. Pad Thai was disappointingly bland with overcooked noodles, although the wide noodles in the pad kee mow were perfectly fried.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle

Herbal Rice Salad at Farmhouse Kitchen in S.F.

Herbal Rice Salad at Farmhouse Kitchen in S.F.

You probably wouldn’t notice Farmhouse Kitchen from the street unless you were looking for it — the front is a nondescript concrete exterior with a flowering vine being trained over the door. But the upscale-casual interior boasts modern furniture, dangling lights that look like star anise, and carved fruit decorations at every rustic wooden table, making it a good spot for a date or a weeknight dinner out. Design elements like a wall display of garden spigots call back to Saengsawang’s childhood on the farm.

It feels like all the right pieces are there for Farmhouse Kitchen but haven’t fallen into place yet, though buzz is building. I’d heard about the restaurant from multiple people in the neighborhood, and Michelin gave it a Bib Gourmand nod last September, presumably on the strength of the showstopping dishes. If the kitchen is holding back for some reason, now’s the time to let go.